It’s late Tuesday night. I have a comic all ready to go, but no internet with which to post it for you. (Ahem, Time Warner Cable) I’m traveling to Gen Con on Wednesday, so I’ll post it as soon as I can connect my Surface to the internet and export a web friendly version of my comic from photoshop. *kermit flail*

Hi everyone! I hope you’re having a good summer. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be posting NPC Comics 2/week, on Monday and Wednesdays for the time being. Day job and life are a bit much right now (nothing major), and I think the comics will be better if I do this. I might be posting more new style “Not Particularly Canon” comics than NPC classics, especially while I think and write material for the NPC characters. We haven’t seen Chloe and Bink in a while, and I’m thinking about bringing them back in a new fun way.

This pack consists of 63 (whoa, a lot this time!) square pictures of NPC Comic character heads taken from NPC Comics that were published in February 2016. They’re all sized as large as the original art allowed, so the sizes vary. Great for using as social media profile pics!

You can get this pack for only a dollar on my Gumroad store. If you’re a patron, you’re getting it for free until the end of July!

I wasn’t sure I’d see the Warcraft movie. The reviews were grim, and I’ve never been a huge Warcraft lore person. But a friend and guildie wanted to see it, so I figured, why not? Here are my brief spoiler-free thoughts about it.

Good stuff:

The orcs are cooler than I thought. When I saw the trailers, I was turned off by the obvious CGI everywhere. But close up, they looked great, felt real, and had some interesting stories.

Garona has a really satisfying storyline. She’s caught in the middle of the factions, so she’s always right at the heart of conflict. I didn’t expect to like her as much as I did.

It was cool to see Dominic Cooper and Ruth Negga, both of whom are doing great work in the Preacher.

Bad stuff:

The main character, Lothar, fell flat for me. I don’t blame the actor. I think they just packed too much into his storyline in too short a time for him to be believable. The whole movie squeezed so much in with all its characters, and he suffered the most for it. I think this would have been a more compelling film, and Lothar a stronger character, if the script focused on just a couple of key players.

The movie highlighted how dull I find the Stormwind humans. There’s a handsome king with a beautiful wife and children, and everyone likes them? *yawn* Game of Thrones and Tudor history has gotten me accustomed to high drama in my fictional patriarchal monarchies. There must be more human monarch drama somewhere in the expanded Warcraft universe, right? I’m not advocating that the movie should insert more conflict there – as I said, its biggest failing is that it tries to do too much. It’s just that I’ve always preferred Ironforge to Stormwind, and this movie reminded me why.

Final thoughts:

I think WoW players will enjoy the Warcraft movie. I wouldn’t recommend it to non-WoW players, unless the trailers really interest them. I missed a lot of easter eggs, so I already want to see it again when its out of theaters.

You can now get 2 avatar packs on my Gumroad store! Pack 1 was a Patreon reward last year, and I wanted to make it available to everyone. Pack 2 is free to patrons of all tiers for the month of June. Not into Patreon? No problem. The packs are pay what you wish, starting at a buck.

I’m going to post a new style of comic every Wednesday and Friday. I’m not publishing it on an entirely different website right now, because it’s about video games and I think will still appeal to the NPC Comic audience. It’s actually a lot like theseone-offcomics I posted in the fall of 2015. But the style is sketchy and cartoony, and it won’t star the NPC Comic characters. For now, I’m calling this experiment Not Particularly Canon.
We’ll still follow the stories of Lisa, Kendra, Jenny, Mike, and the cats on Mondays. I have more stories written for them that I’m excited to get to. 😀

At the end of the summer I’ll take a look at how this experiment is going and decide if I should continue as is, move the new comics to their own website, or make 3D comics since we’ll all be wearing VR headsets 24/7 by then.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

Every month this summer I’m making a digital pack of avatars for you. I’ll put them up on my Gumroad store as a pay-what-you-wish purchase. And they’ll be free for that month to Patreon supporters of all reward tiers.

Holy crap, it’s May! My quest log has been full of PAX East, Virtual Reality, Hearthstone, Snapchat, and the usual: making comics.

Comic Quest Log: Using My Surface Pro 4 EVEN MORE!

You may already be aware that ever since I started NPC Comic, I’ve been drawing it on my 2008 Cintiq 21 UX. But last fall I got a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, so I could draw my comic on the go or from my couch. I still consider my big Cintiq my main drawing tool, but lately I’ve been using my Surface more and more. For 2 reasons:

1) I’ve had a busy month with some travel and a lot of catching up that I’d rather do from my couch.

2) I switched from an all-touchscreen workflow to using the keyboard. It was really important to me when I got my Surface that I go keyboard free. And I did, successfully. In the Twitter picture below you can see that I’m not using a keyboard there. I have a utility on the left side of the screen that has customizable touch buttons in place of my favorite keyboard shortcuts. It’s been great, especially when space is cramped, like on a train or plane. After months of using my Surface without a keyboard 90% of the time, I tried popping the keyboard out and drawing just to see how it felt. I had to admit that it helped me work faster. So that discovery has led me to lean on my Surface even more lately.

Buffer report:

I’m ahead on writing and sketching! But not inking and coloring.

Written: 17 comics

Sketched: 8 comics

Inked: 2 comics

Colored: 0 comics

Blogging in the Comic Posts

I’ve been writing more in the posts that go with each comic lately, and you’ve been writing back. I’ve really been enjoying your comments. I love hearing about other people’s game experiences. Thank you for sharing so much.

Mary Quest Log

I’ve gotten closer to undertaking my quest to build a computer. I was waiting for Nvidia to announce they’re anticipated 2016 graphics cards, and they just did! The cards are out May 27th, and I plan on ordering parts in the next month. I’ll report back on my progress.

PAX East 2016

John and I try to go to PAX East every year. It’s not quite as eventful as GenCon, but it’s still a good time and easier for us to travel to. My favorite game I played there was Death Squared. It’s a co-op game where you play cubes trying to solve room puzzles while trying to not accidentally kill each other.

Virtual Reality

My friend and coworker Jules has the HTC Vive, Valve’s virtual reality headset. I came over to his apartment with my dad and John in tow to try it out. Have you tried a VR headset yet? It’s something you have to try to really understand what it’s like. I had used the cardboard headsets that go with smartphones, but this was my first time trying the Real Deal. It’s pretty amazing. I felt like I was somewhere else. And I lost all orientation of where I actually was. When I took the headset off, I felt like I had been transported to a different world and back. We tried a lot of the little VR games on Steam, some of which are surprisingly robust. One of the favorites was Audio Shield, in which you punch colored bubbles with the corresponding hand. It sounds ridiculous, but was another one of those things you just have to try to get how cool it is.

My takeaways:

I will probably want a VR headset. I’m not sure I’ll go first generation. But soon.

I didn’t get motion sick even though I do with I use the cardboard headsets with smartphones.

The power to be transported is real. I tried an app that took me to a mountain somewhere. I didn’t feel vertigo, but I could NOT bring myself to take a step over a cliff. I knew rationally that all that lay before my feet was my friend’s sturdy hardwood floor, but there was NO WAY I could make my foot go forward. NOPE.

The power to be scared is real. I also went to a dark cavern underwater, where I saw a creepy glowing fish eat another fish. Nothing jumped out at me, but in the dark I was instantly on edge and knew that if anything surprised me I’d curl up in a ball.

I really like that the Vive is a moving-around experience. There was an arcade game inside Valve’s VR “Lab” called Xortex in which your hand is a spaceship and you fly around a room shooting bad spaceships. I loved twisting and turning and flying my hand around.

The HDMI cord is a little annoying. I felt limited at times because I was worried I’d be tangled in it. But we’re far from being able to have these things wireless, so for now it’s a necessity.

Snapchat

I got on the Snapchat bandwagon. I never thought I would, but I tried it while I was at PAX East and found it very addictive. I’ve been doing doodle breaks at work, behind the scenes of making my comic, and of course, silly face tracking. It’s a really cool tool for visual story telling. I’m looking forward to experimenting more on it. I think it’s catching on right now because marketers heard that young people are all over it, but it’s sticking because it’s a joy to use. Add me if you’re interested! Username is maryvarn.

Thank you for your support!

NPC Comic continues because of the support from my generous patrons on Patreon, Amazon shoppers using my Amazon link, and the wonderful people who buy my ebooks, THANK YOU!

Welcome to the April 2016 Quest Log. 😀 My quest log has been full of sketch cards, making comics, world-building, researching building a pc, Miitomo, and more.

I’ve been writing these newsletters on Patreon every month, and I’m going to start publishing them here on the site blog instead. Now they have pretty pictures! Oh, and now I’m calling them Quest Logs instead of Newsletters. Because life is just a series of quests.

Comic Quest Log

I’ve had a busy winter of work and comics! The February sketch card drive is over, so if you’re a $5 patron, you should have yours by now. A few of you have let me know that you’ve received yours, and sent me pictures. Thanks! I’m always relieved to know it makes it to you ok. 🙂

I’m having a lot of fun with the SIQO comics. I’m starting to think more about the world of SIQO. Who are the major players? What’s Star City all about? Is there a federation of planets? Is there one big organization of bad guys? Is there an equivalent of Alliance and Horde?
Anyway, I’ve gotten as far as making a OneNote called “World building” and asking those questions. I hope to slowly start answering them in upcoming chapters.

Mary Quest Log

I haven’t been playing video games very much lately. 🙁 The comic and work have been keeping me very busy, and the lull of World of Warcraft before the expansion lands means I’m not very tempted to play it now.

But I HAVE been obsessed with building my own computer, so when Legion drops I can play it on ultra. I’ve never built a computer before, but with all the resources out there, it seems like a great time to do it. I’ve been obsessively researching parts, tweaking my pc part picker build, and watching build videos. I think the planning might be the best part. I have a feeling actually building the thing and getting it to run will have its share of frustrations. I’m holding off now since Nvidia is supposedly announcing new GPUs this week. I don’t know if I’ll get one of the new Pascal GPUs, but I figure I may as well wait since the release could drive the older ones down in price.

Nintendo just released their social networking app, Miitomo, for iOS and Android. It’s charming and silly and has a good chance of only being popular for a few weeks. You make a mii and dress it up and answer questions that your friends will see. Friend me if you’re on it!